Over its century and a quarter, scenic and historic Fort Worden has weathered world wars, economic depressions, windstorms, king tides, rock festivals, and at least one global pandemic. A tidal wave of problems besets the handsome park, and there is no ready solution.
Today, Port Townsend’s Army base-turned-state-park persists, occupying 400 acres of waterfront forest and beaches at the gateway to Puget Sound. With Officers’ Row lining an spacious parade ground, it may look like a movie set, as it was for The Officer and a Gentleman. But it is facing a new set of problems having to do with economics, rival bureaucracies, and quite literally dry rot.
The stately park and the array of nonprofits based there are in no immediate danger. Arts-promoter Centrum, born in 1973, is planning another year of music festivals ranging from Brazilian choro and fiddle tunes to ukeleles and chamber music.
Fort Worden’s deeper problems are structural. A decade ago, Port Townsend struck a deal with Washington State Parks to take over management of the built portion of the park – 90 aging buildings that include handsome homes, auditoriums, a guardhouse, and barracks that once housed hundreds of soldiers and wayward girls. To do so, the new organization opted for an unusual structure — a public development authority (PDA) similar to those used to manage Pike Place Market, St. Edwards Park in Kirkland, and San Francisco’s Presidio.
The Fort Worden PDA raised millions from private and public sources, borrowed millions more, hired scores of people and set out to transform the park into a regional venue for “life-long learning.”
It didn’t work. PDA accounting was a mess even before its financial officer was charged and convicted of misappropriating funds. Dave Robison, the local planner who conceived of and directed the PDA, resigned. Last year the PDA itself declared itself bankrupt, its finances taken over by a court-appointed receiver, leaving unpaid debts to dozens of prospective visitors and a local bank which had lent the agency $6 million.
The Port Townsend Leader, the local weekly, has tracked the resulting debacle. Rod Stevens, a Bainbridge-based real estate consultant who worked on the project, posted a scathing critique on the Port Townsend Free Press website, blaming the collapse on poor management of an unrealistic business plan.
Others largely agree about the deep problems and argue that the situation was made far worse by the effects of the Covid pandemic and the PDA’s unusual management structure which did not qualify for the federal bailout funds that kept Centrum and other nonprofits afloat during the pandemic. “The PDA was a bold idea,” says Barry Mitzman, a retired journalist and president of the Fort Worden Foundation. “It was difficult from the outset, and they got no breaks.”
So what now? State Parks, which owns the park, has resumed management of the buildings, but the homes and other hospitality services are shut down except those used by Centrum and other nonprofit arts organizations and the local community radio station. Parks officials have been meeting with the city and other players to come up with a new plan. “It’s like trying to rebuild a small city,” says Centrum director Rob Birman. “It
doesn’t have to be solved overnight.”
The rest of the park (campgrounds, trails, the remnants of the huge concrete gun emplacements meant to guard the entrance to Puget Sound) remain open to visitors. The questions revolve around those 90 buildings, some of them dating to the early 1900s, badly in need of repair and costly to maintain. “After all this, it remains a scenic, historic campus, open to new ideas and a fresh start,” Mitzman says.
The players will be weighing a range of possibilities. For example:
Housing: Expensive Port Townsend is desperately in need of affordable homes, especially for younger working people. Some of Fort Worden’s aging buildings may lend themselves to restoration, as has been done in Pike Place Market and the Presidio.
Education: Fort Worden already is home to Peninsula College classrooms, a woodworking school, a dance school, a fledgling culinary arts program, as well as Centrum workshops. Other possibilities include a retreat for young eco scientists, as with Islandwood on Bainbridge. Most, however, depend on inexpensive rent space in high-maintenance buildings.
Private development: With ample acreage and waterfront views, the built portions should be able to attract private investment. The Presidio got a huge boost from film producer George Lucas, who won rights to 15 acres for a $300-million project including office space and a museum. Some locals envision a boutique hotel like the one at Kirkland’s St. Edwards State Park, putting affluent visitors at the doorsteps to Centrum and other local arts venues. “There’s room for homes and restaurants, for profits and nonprofits,” Birman says. “It could be a way to bring together left and right visions, opening coffers on both sides.”
Whoever takes over will face the problem of what to do with those mostly
woodframe buildings built decades ago to house soldiers, not artists and tourists. A few of those buildings have been handsomely restored. But most sit there and rot while taxpayers pay thousands to keep them reasonably dry and to slow the rate of deterioration. Estimates to restore those buildings range as high as $350 million, with little or no chance of recouping the investment.
Some are worth preserving. Others are not. But historic preservation rules and local sentiment are obstacles either way. Consider, by contrast, nearby Port Gamble, where the corporate owners restored buildings they deemed worth saving, and tore down the rest.
This selective salvage would be far more difficult at Fort Worden, intimately linked by geography, economics, and culture to neighboring Port Townsend, where people cling to anything historic — be it fiddle tunes or funky old Victorians or a century-old Army barracks.
As one local leader puts it, “the charm of the place is also its greatest liability.”
We live in a region with precious few historic buildings, much less entire assemblies of historic buildings, but we are fortunate to have a number of historic former military facilities on Puget Sound.
Fort Casey on Whidbey Island was also built to guard the Sound, and has also been turned into a state park and facilities for other educational and/or recreational uses with restoration of some buildings.
Fort Lawton in Seattle was a large army base that was transferred to the City of Seattle and is now a park, with residences in some historic houses, a waste treatment facility, and plans for affordable housing. Unfortunately though, most of the historic structures in the park have been boarded up and unused for decades. In many other cities they would be in active use by arts groups, hostels for travelers, etc., but the city parks dept. is not interested in managing a variety of uses, and the neighbors are not interested in sharing the underused jewel in their backyard.
Attention, Gov. Ferguson. This might be a prime opportunity to solve this long mystery, and to revitalize state parks in the bargain. It might also be a good way to rouse State Parks from its organizational lethargy, by having the governor appoint a dynamic new leader for Parks and leading the way to direct serious money to the sagging Fort Worden — and to give it an exciting new mission.
The upgraded Keeper’s residence & large Coast Guard’s chiefs house at the Point Wilson Lighthouse adjacent to Fort Worden are not affected by this. Rentable year round. This us an active operating USCS lighthouse under visitor management of the US Lighthouse Society headquarted at Point No Point. See the Facebook page of US Lighthouse Society at Point Wilson
Bring back the wayward girls and let Centrum ‘manage’ them. PT is mostly retirees so the work wouldn’t be that hard.